It is understood that despite the lockdown restrictions being lifted next Wednesday, the majority of England will enter the two toughest tiers of Covid restrictions with measures remaining unchanged until spring.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock, is set to announce the tiers tomorrow which will leave large parts of the hospitality sector locked down even after the national lockdown ends on 2nd December.
Mark Harper, chairman of the Covid Recovery Group of backbenchers, feels MP’s were misled by the government about what was intended.
Talking to The Guardian he said “This basically tells you that the government’s expecting pretty much the whole country to be in tiers 2 and 3 tomorrow – and frankly stay in tiers 2 and 3 pretty much until we have a vaccine, which it doesn’t expect until the middle of next year.”
“Our argument is, if you got [test and trace] working, and you had lower restrictions, and you did actually get the vaccine out by Easter, you would save 2.4% on the unemployment rate. That’s 200,000 people [who] wouldn’t lose their jobs, and there would be no scarring of GDP long-term, rather than a 3% hit.”
